Sinner (46 page)

A
hand seized his arm, and hauled him to his feet. Drago cried out, but did not resist. It was time. His only sadness was that he lost his dream of a gentle pasture somewhere in Tencendor where a shallow stream ran over smooth-backed rocks and pebbles, reflecting a carefree sun and the faint shadow of the afternoon moon.

Fully awake now, Drago almost let his terror claim him. Terrified, not only for himself, but for what his bitter treachery was bringing to Tencendor.

He wondered if there was anything he could do to save Tencendor.

Trust us.

But he was given no time to trust. The Questors dragged him into the centre of their pillared chamber. Outside the sky was awash in silver-streaked emerald.

Gods! How close
were
they to the Star Gate?

“Not close enough,” said StarLaughter, and cuddled her child close. One of its arms flopped out of the wrap, and Raspu reached over and absent-mindedly tucked the flaccid limb back into safety.

“Now,” Sheol said conversationally, “has come the time to use you all up, Drago SunSoar.”

“You promised me that you’d see my blood order reversed!” Drago no longer believed in their promises, but he was desperate to buy himself some time.

“Did we?” asked Mot, one eyebrow raised, his mouth slack and moist with anticipation. “
I
cannot remember it.”

“Nor we,” echoed the other Questors in well-rehearsed chorus. “Never.”

“Never,” whispered StarLaughter. She tossed her head, and sneered. “I confess myself unsad over the matter. For a SunSoar, you were a lacklustre lover.”

She frowned, and put a finger to her pursed lips. “Well now, doesn’t that make me think. Perhaps you are
not
a SunSoar after all!”

She pealed with laughter. “Use him! I am anxious to get home!”

And the Questors reached out.

It was agony. They made no attempt to spare him. Pain
ravaged
through his body, destroying vessels and tissue, burning and roping out of control.

He was dying, he knew it. And somehow, he was glad of it. He would not have to face what he had betrayed. His father’s anger. His brother’s terror. A land ravaged by disease and hunger and despair.

And more, if these Demons managed to put Qeteb back together again.

The pain increased. It bubbled and boiled through him.

Drago felt himself explode as if in slow motion. He thought he actually saw bits of his tissue and organs spray about the chamber until the Questors and StarLaughter were covered in it. The children – the black-winged and
visaged Hawkchilds – were clinging to pillars, writhing on the floor, sucking and licking, their hands clawed and scrabbling. Some of them, he observed with dying clarity, seemed to be growing beaks.

Well, too late for curiosity now. He was only a disembodied mind, watching with casual interest the disintegration of his body.

Had all the men and women and creatures who had died so his father could attain his dream of a reborn Tencendor suffered the way that he did now?

“I am so
sorry.
I wish I had been a better man.”

We regretted. We were consumed with regrets. It is nothing unusual. Use your grief and regret, Drago.

How?

You will help Caelum and Tencendor?

Yes, yes, yes.

In any way you can?

Yes, yes, yes.

Then listen to the Song we make.

And Drago opened his eyes, and blinked, and the Questors were gone, and the children and StarLaughter and her abominable baby were gone, and in their place stood a group of five people, three men and two women, their faces kindly and caring. One of them, an old, plump man with wispy white hair, reached out a hand in a farewell gesture.

“Farewell, Pilgrim,” he said. “Remember us from time to time.”

StarLaughter licked the blood off her fingers, tipped back her head, and screamed with joy. All were coated in blood, all licked, scraped, slurped in their efforts to consume as much of what had once been Drago as they could.

It tasted good.

More importantly, it tasted of power.

Sheol lifted her head. Her chin was slippery with blood. “We are here,” she said tonelessly.

They looked about. All traces of the chamber had gone. The orchard had gone. Any semblance of a world had gone. They stood surrounded by darkness, their feet standing on cold, flat nothingness. But over them, pulsating with energy, hung the Star Gate.

Through it they could see four or five faces staring down at them.

As they watched, the emerald and silver warding sighed, shimmered, and died.

“What time of day is it?” asked StarLaughter.

“Just gone noon,” Sheol whispered. “Not long now. Prepare yourselves.”

She clicked her fingers, and whistled to the flock of children swarming to one side.

“Come, come, my chicks. Spread your wings, taste the feel of the air. Soon you will be free to quest.”

Axis gagged, partly at the sudden cessation of the Star Dance – he had felt this only once before when he had “died” in the ice fields north of the Murkle Mountains – and partly in horror at what he could see through the Star Gate.

Pitch darkness, but there was a
something
within that darkness.

It bulged.

“It’s over,” said Adamon, just behind him. “It’s all over.”

Axis looked away from the horror in the Star Gate and gazed about the chamber.

The Circle of Star Gods were here.

Useless.

Some fifteen Enchanters, including StarDrifter, were here.

Useless.

Even WolfStar was still here.

And he was as useless as the rest of them.

“What can we do?” Axis said, desolate. Azhure moved to his side and put her arms about him. She buried her face in his shoulder. She could not yet believe that all they were, all they had fought for, was teetering on the brink of absolute disaster.

“It is my
son
who has brought this on us!” Axis cried, and Azhure’s arms jerked tighter about him.

“My son!” And he screamed, arching his body back, the scream reverberating about the now pale, shadowed dome.

“No,” WolfStar said, stepping forward. “Blame the ancient ones who left us these repositories of misery. Blame
them
if you must blame anyone, Axis.”

“But –”

“WolfStar is right,” StarDrifter said tiredly from his corner. He had never thought to witness the day when he would support WolfStar. “Drago was only a means. The Demons would have found a way to get through eventually.”

“Then damn all stars in the universe that it had to be during
my
lifetime!” cried Xanon.

That drew a shaky laugh from Adamon. “Beloved, our lifetimes were –
were
– once forever. Of course they came during our lifetimes.”

“But not forever any more,” Azhure said, lifting her head and wiping the tears from her eyes. She’d only had forty years to live with immortality, but forty years had been enough to develop an affection for the everlasting.

“No,” Axis whispered. “Not forever at all. Mortal once more.”

He looked about the chamber, and laughed bitterly. “All of us!
Mortal!
Plain men and women. No power. No
magic. No enchantment.
No Star Dance!
What shall we do in this new world, Azhure? Crawl about roofs replacing thatching to make ourselves feel useful?”

“Axis,” StarDrifter said, finally moving forward to look into the Star Gate. He grimaced, swallowed, and looked away. “That is enough. What we must needs discuss now is what we
do
now. These Demons ready themselves to break through. What do we
do
about it?”

“We can do nothing,” WolfStar said.

“We must be able to do
something!
” Axis protested.

WolfStar shook his head, and looked at Adamon.

“Axis,” the once-God of the Firmament said, “they will slaughter us when they break through. They will want to ensure that we never, never rise again. They will want free rein through Tencendor.”

“But the Sceptre!”

“We will find another day to snatch it back,” Azhure said. “Adamon is right. If we are all bunched into this chamber when the Demons break through, then they will slaughter us all. Better to flee now so we can live to aid Caelum in his quest.”

“Caelum,” Axis suddenly said. “Gods! I asked Caelum to ride for the Star Gate!”

“You cursed fool!” WolfStar cried. “He’s our only hope, and you told him to ride
here
?”

“I thought an army would be useful…I thought…oh,
damn
it! I did
not
think! We’ve got to warn him.”

“How?” StarDrifter said dryly. “Do you suggest we run or fly to him? Will we have time?”

“Enough!” Adamon said, taking charge. “We all need to get out of here,
fast.
I do not know how we are going to counter these demons, but I
do
know that we will be more useful alive than dead.”

“True,” WolfStar said. “We must leave. Now.” And he took a step towards one of the archways.

“WolfStar!” Adamon grabbed him by the arm. “I do not particularly care where you go, but for the moment you go nowhere near Caelum! With these Demons come over two hundred raging souls questing for
your
personal destruction. I do not want to risk them finding you with Caelum although, by the Stars, I truly don’t care whether or not they find you at all!”

“Oh,” WolfStar said, “I have enough to keep me busy for the moment without bothering Caelum.”

Axis took Azhure’s hand. “Azhure and I will go to him, Adamon. He is our son.”

Adamon nodded. “Be careful.” He grinned wanly at the stupidity of that remark. “Be careful, all of you. Run to whatever place you think safe. Later…later I will send word to you. We will regroup. We
must,
if Caelum is to prevail. Now, I suggest that we start to move.
Now!
”

The chamber of the Star Gate lay empty. Outside the sun dipped towards the west. The afternoon winked and woke.

Shadows suddenly started to shimmer over the dome of the chamber again.

But they were not blue – rather, black.

Beyond the Star Gate lay only blackness. But it was a blackness that rippled and writhed. Faces and hands and claw-tipped wings pressed against it, seeking to create the rent through which to enter.

Despair waited.

T
he two white donkeys, in their own indefinable way, accomplished more than any horse or even birdman could. As the noon-day sun faded into afternoon, the little blue cart pulled up at the edges of the Minstrelsea forest just above the Ancient Barrows.

“Faraday?” Zenith said. She sat uncomfortably, more afraid than she’d ever been in her life. She felt only emptiness where once had been the Star Dance. She was useless. A husk instead of a living entity.

“Hush, Zenith. We will be safe within the forest.”

Faraday climbed down from the cart and unhitched the two donkeys, leaving them free to browse about the undergrowth. She patted their necks and whispered to them, then turned back to Zenith.

“I want you to stay here with the cart and donkeys,” she said.

Zenith blinked. “But I thought…at the Star Gate…you’d need me.”

She stopped, thought, and then smiled sadly. “But I am somewhat useless, am I not?”

Faraday took her hand between both of hers. “You are not useless, but you would be dead there, Zenith.”

“And you?”

Faraday paused before answering. “What I have has not been affected by the cessation of the Star Dance, Zenith. I have enough to protect me.”

“I hope so, Faraday. How can you know what you will face when the Demons break through?”

Faraday smiled suddenly, brilliantly. “Zenith! I have been through so much. I have been rent and torn and reborn too many times to fear death again. I doubt the Demons will worry me over much. And Drago will need me.”

“Drago…who knows if he is even still alive?”

Faraday’s smile died and she dropped Zenith’s hand. “Given where he has gone, and what uses him, I doubt very much that Drago will come back through the Star Gate ‘alive’. But however he comes back, it is all we will have to work with. Now, rest here, Zenith. I shall come back. I promise.”

And then she was gone.

Faraday walked quietly but briskly towards the Ancient Barrows. About her the forest was still. Waiting. The birds had roosted; she could see rows of them lining the branches of the trees, all looking southeast towards the Barrows.

They knew what was coming.

As did the other creatures of the forest. They lay or crouched unmoving amid the undergrowth, humped shapes in dark shadows. All, as the birds, aligned south-east. Waiting.

The trees’ Song, normally such a beautiful undertone to the forest, now hummed and buzzed with agitation. Beneath the murmuring of the individual trees, Faraday
could hear the angry hum of the Earth Tree herself, far to the north in the Avarinheim.

What would happen, she wondered, when the Demons broke through? Would the trees attack? Or would they just watch?

It depended, Faraday supposed, on how the Earth Tree herself perceived the Demons. Would she see them as a threat to the land, or just to the people – and the plains people in particular? If so, then the Earth Tree and the forests might leave well enough alone.

Perhaps she might even be glad that the Plains Dwellers, as the Avar still tended to refer to the Acharites, were being decimated.

But the Icarii were affected, too. Deeply so, since they had lost the Star Dance.

Faraday shook her head. There was no point in trying to second guess the trees’ reaction.

There was a step to one side, and Faraday halted.

Goodwife Renkin stepped out from the trees. Still dressed as ever in the country worsted draped inelegantly about her coarse frame, she nevertheless exuded the power of the Mother.

“I do not like this, Daughter,” she said without preamble.

“What can you do, Mother?”

“Watch.”

“But –”

“I cannot know
what
assails us, nor what I or the trees can do about it until it moves among us, Daughter. Tell me, is Axis’ son Drago responsible for this?”

“Is he responsible for the fact the sun sets each night? Is he responsible for the rain that batters your trees?” Faraday took a deep, angry breath. “Drago is a pawn. He is being used by the Demons to enter this world, but the Demons would have come eventually anyway, with or without him.”
Better
with
him, she thought, better by many, many lives.

The Mother eyed Faraday curiously. “And what will you do, Faraday? You move through these trees with purposeful step.”

“I will
help
,” Faraday said. “I am discontent with just watching.”

She approached the spaces about the Barrows cautiously. There was no sign of activity, and they would have appeared abandoned were it not for the heavy air of tainted expectation that lay over them. She shuddered, wrapping her arms about herself.

The blue flame above the bronze obelisk stuttered and flickered, sickened nigh unto extinction.

“Drago,” Faraday muttered, reminding herself that it was, indeed, necessary to go down the tunnel.

She flicked a glance at the sun. Gods, but it was sinking towards mid-afternoon!

Fighting the nervous impulse to retch, Faraday lifted her skirts and ran towards the tunnel entrance leading to the Star Gate. It was too late to rely only on her legs now, and so as she fled inside the black mouth of the tunnel, Faraday wrapped herself in Noah’s strange, ancient power.

Sheol tipped back her head and howled.

All the Questors, as well as StarLaughter and the now beaked children who huddled close, were wrapped in consuming darkness. There was no sense of any world about them now, they were suspended in time and space just below the Star Gate.

Sheol abruptly swallowed her howl and looked about her at the others. Her sapphire eyes glittered with power and hunger, momentarily lighting up her companions.

“It is time,” she hissed.

The other Questors murmured, while the children shuffled in excitement, but StarLaughter gave an incoherent cry and jiggled the child agitatedly in her arms.

Raspu reached out to her and laid his hand on her shoulder. “Quiet, Queen of Heaven. Our time is nigh. Soon your child shall live and breathe again.”

StarLaughter stared at him with wild eyes. “Soon?” she whispered.

“Soon,” he murmured, kissing her brow. “Very soon.”

“
Now,
” said Sheol and, lifting her arms, called to bear all the residual power the Questors had drained from Drago.

About her the children shrieked and wailed.

As one, every statue in the chamber of the Star Gate cracked. Fissures ran from feet through the bodies, then splintered to run to the tips of each outstretched wing.

There was a sound, as if of a sigh, and then small chips of marble began to fall to the floor.

Faraday, huddled in the gloom behind one of the archways, put her hands to her mouth in horror.

They would destroy the chamber? She had not thought this.

And then another thought, more frightful than the last. Would they then destroy the Star Gate itself?

“No!” she wailed between her fingers, and rocked back and forth in agony.
No!

The Star Gate began to boil. Faraday could not see it from her hiding place, but she could
feel
it. The blackness within the Star Gate was boiling as surely as a fetid soup over the fiery pits of the AfterLife.

Within the chamber the atmosphere thickened and warmed.

Faraday crept one or two steps closer, the limit of her
courage. Everything within her screamed to flee before it was too late – but she could not. Drago would be lost without her, and Tencendor would be lost without Drago.

Then humps, lumps, shapes – she did not know how else to describe them – rose through the Star Gate. Scores of them, rising as if through swamp of thick black mud, their true nature cloaked by the as yet enveloping blackness.

“Gods, gods, gods,” Faraday whispered, unable to help herself. She sobbed, choking on words, and she had to drop her eyes to gather her courage.

When she raised them she was numbed with horror. Through the Star Gate, she did not know how, were emerging black, winged shapes. There were many scores of them. Hundreds of them.

Faraday flattened herself against the tunnel wall, hiding from the strange black orbs that had replaced their eyes.

She knew they had to be the children, but they no longer looked like children, and only their wings connected them with their Icarii heritage.

In every other respect they appeared gigantic black hawks. Only…only that at the tip of each wing groped a scrawny, clawed hand, and the beaks were more mouths than horn. Mouths with enlarged, protruding upper lips that had hardened into a sharpened beak at their centre.

They might be more bird than Icarii, but they had retained their mouths with which to cry WolfStar’s name, and hands with which to grasp their prey.

Now they had emerged fully from the Star Gate, and shucked off what remained of the gloom that had been their birthing membrane. They fluttered, ran, hopped, and flew about the chamber in disordered horror. They clutched, clawed and pecked at their companions in anger and frustration as they collided and careened about in their mad chase about the too-small chamber.

There was a whisper, and the children –
hawks
– halted.

“
Hunt.
”

And again. “
Hunt.
”

Faraday pressed her hands against her ears now, for she could not bear to hear that voice again.

The hawks exploded into purpose. They turned for the archways that led upwards to the twenty-six Barrows and rushed through. There was a noise, a strange wailing, and Faraday realised it was the sound of the Hawkchilds surging through the tunnels and apertures leading up from the chamber into the Barrows themselves.

The Barrows exploded. They burst apart in a shower of earth and gorse and rock, sending gouts of material several hundred paces into the air.

And from the wreckage of each Barrow erupted the black shapes of the Hawkchilds, higher yet than the rocks and earth, straight up.

Zared’s men, the accompanying Strike Force throwing fluid shadows from overhead, had fled through the morning and into the afternoon. By the time the northern border of the Silent Woman Woods loomed before them, men were clinging in weariness to saddles, and horses had blood dribbling down their legs from scrapes where they’d stumbled to their knees in exhaustion.

Behind them, at a distance of perhaps a hundred paces, rode Zared himself, and behind him at another half a league came Caelum and his force.

The Strike Force, as all Zared’s men, were safely within the Woods when Zared pulled his horse to a halt some forty paces before the first of the trees.

He dismounted, patted the beast, and slapped its
rump, sending it trotting towards the forest. Then he turned and watched Caelum riding towards him.

As he waited, Zared felt an oppressiveness settle over his shoulders. He shuddered, and looked about, but did not know to what to attribute it.

Then his eye caught the sun. Mid-afternoon.

He dropped his gaze and beckoned urgently at Caelum. “
Faster!
” he screamed.

Caelum, as every man behind him, dug boots into exhausted mounts and gained a last spurt of speed. A few of the riders outpaced Caelum, but Zared stood his ground as they thundered past him and into the trees.

“Thank the gods,” Zared said as Caelum pulled up beside him. “I thought you would not –”

There was an earth-shattering roar to the south-east, and Caelum’s horse had to fight to keep its feet.

“What…?” Zared said, and Caelum half stood in his stirrups and shaded his eyes so he could peer towards the Ancient Barrows.

“Merciful Heavens,” he said, then slumped down into the saddle.

“What is it?”

“The Barrows have exploded.”

“Then they are coming –”

“My parents are there,” Caelum said in a curiously toneless voice.

“You cannot help them now!” Zared yelled. About them horses and men ran for the trees with forgotten reserves of strength. “Quick!”

Zared grabbed at the reins of Caelum’s horse, but Caelum shook himself and reached down a hand.

“It will be faster if you ride behind me, Zared,” he said quietly.

Zared stared at him, then grabbed his hand and swung up behind his nephew.

Faraday slowly raised her face from her arms and looked back into the crumbling Star Gate chamber. The black forms of the Hawkchilds had gone, but they had been only a prelude to the true horror about to step through.

Faraday didn’t so much see the Demons, as she was
aware
of them.

A man with bones that stuck almost through his skin stepped through first. He paused, looked about, and burped through his gluttonous smile. Mot.

Faraday was almost overcome with an overwhelming sense of hunger, a hunger so deep she knew she would hack off her own foot to assuage it. She fought it with whatever power she could bring to bear, and it slowly faded into a persistent ache in the pit of her stomach.

The man leaned back into the swirling, nauseous mess within the Star Gate and aided another of his companions into Tencendor.

Faraday began to itch, her eyesight blurred and she felt her blood slither towards every orifice of her body. Her skin twitched, and pustules simmered eagerly beneath its surface.

Raspu, Demon of Pestilence, hugged his companion, and together they aided Barzula, Tempest, through the Star Gate.

Faraday felt something rush through the tunnel towards her. Air, fire, water, ice-stones the size of her fist – where had they all come from? Instinctively she fought back, and the storm dwindled and died.

Mot, Raspu and Barzula turned towards the shadows where Faraday lay huddled.

“What was that?” Raspu said.

“I felt power,” Mot said.

Barzula took a step towards the archway. “Unusual – is not the Star Dance dead?”

Mot caught at his arm. “No time. It does not seek to harm us. And look, Rox emerges!”

Faraday was crushed by a sense of terror so extreme she almost voided her bowels. Surely she could not survive in the face of this! She slid to her belly on the dusty floor of the tunnel and whimpered, her hands clutching at the detritus about her.